If I was in charge of a telecommunications company…

Yes, this is one of those “If I was in charge, I’d do this…” posts. Don’t we all have opinions on how companies should be run? Just had these thoughts today so decided to write them down. Canada is known as one of the worst places for mobile phone plans (from a consumer perspective), largely because of the lack of competition. If by some freak cosmological accident I ended up in charge of a telecommunications company, here’s some things I’d do:

I’m not going to talk about pricing or packages or anything like that, because at the end of the day what matters most for company longevity is customer loyalty and word of mouth marketing (even more so in today’s hyper social world). The only reasons why I think the existing companies are doing so well in Canada now are because of their entrenched position with infrastructure, and the lack of choice for consumers. With that said,

1. I’d ensure that our company has some sort of automated process that scans existing customers accounts (ooo privacy, but bear with me) and if there are any current company promotions that are better plans (either in terms of the same as what they have but cheaper, or more features than what they have for same price) than what the customer currently has we automatically switch them to the cheaper plan and notify them.

2. The plans would be simplified (which would need to happen for number 1 to work effectively).

3. Company wide policy that if a customer calls and complains about something not working, and they have ANY difficulty getting the level of service they asked for, we immediately grant them at least a free month’s service.

4. For customers who have been with the company for over three years. We surprise a certain number of them randomly once a year with free phones and/or upgraded plans for their current phones.

That’s just four things. Not a lot, and I fully realize there’s a lot more involved with running a company, but four things that I think would help towards gaining long term customers and viral word of mouth marketing.